The Big Day

So once we finally arrived in Portland and slept off our airport-fatigue hangover, we headed out Friday morning to begin enjoying the prize. We arrived at Union Gospel Mission about a quarter til 6. There, we met the guys from LMG Concerts, the sponsor of the prize. Lowell and Summer (the guys from LMG). Here, they informed us that the bands had just found out the night before that they were supposed to be serving that early. Lowell said, "Don't worry. We have a good relationship with the Newsboys. Or, at least we did." At this point, I became worried that the guys would be cranky & crabby.

But, quite the opposite was true. Here is Michael Tait, commenting that Toby should be an easy name to remember because of Toby Mac.

And here is Duncan Phillips. I wasn't expecting the mohawk, and it took me a bit to get used to his sense of humor (very sarcastic and I couldn't always tell when he was joking).


Michael and Duncan were the only members of the Newsboys to come out and serve. But that's okay because Disciple was there also. In this picture, you can see Michael and Duncan, and 4 members of Disciple (Kevin Young is next to Duncan, then Isreal Beachy, then Micah Sannon, then you can just barely make out Trent Reiff)


Here, I'm helping Duncan put on his gloves :) The girl next to me is Mary Hall. She won an essay contest to be here and also at the concert. Her and her mom, Kathy, were super people and we enjoyed getting to know them!



Here I am, manning my post (handing out milk and helping with forks when Trent was busy doing other things...e.i. refilling milk). Aaron and Sadie are helping me.


Then, later that day, it was off to the concert, which started at 7, but VIPs got in at 5 for a meet & great with the Newsboys.
Here, someone had commented about how all the Newsboys songs have such great drum riffs (is that what they're called?) and before they guy could get to his question, Duncan, who is the drummer raised his hand and bounced up and down grinning. After watching him in concert, I can see exactly why.

Here they are singing to us at the meet & greet.

Next, we got group photos with the Newsboys. After serving with them this morning, Michael made the comment that he just "loved this little girl" and asked if he could hold Sadie :)
And here's the concert. Disciple was a very energetic group, with lots of head-banging. It made it tough to get good pictures, but it sure was fun watching them!

At the end of their last song, the guitar player (Micah) did a back flip off an amp. It was a pretty cool way to end their part of the concert.

After Disciple, it was Kutless. I didn't really get any good pictures of them...just a few of the lead singer. They were less energetic and pretty much just stood there and sang/played their instruments.

But after Kutless, was the main event. The Newsboys. They were VERY entertaining and it was so much fun to watch Aaron enjoy the show.

This is Duncan, the drummer. It was so much fun watching his facial expressions. You could really tell that he was enjoying himself up there!

This was for the song "Escape" and Duncan used the bullhorn to announce "Don't Believe the Hype!"

So intense!

Duncan cracks me up :)





Here's a picture of Aaron during the Newsboys part of the show. I know he doesn't look overly excited, but he was. As soon as he saw me point the camera at him, he had to be "cool."

This is Jody Davis, their guitar player. Him and Jeff Frankenstein are both more introverted and less showy. I could very easily see Aaron being a lot like them when he makes it big :)

Here's a shot of all 4 guys together.

A great show! I took tons of pictures and even video. However, the audio part of the videos is horrible because we were right in front of the speakers (thank you, Toby, for getting us ear plugs!) Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries before the best part of the show. During their last song ("Jesus Freak"), the riser that Duncan and his drum set are on lifted up (you can see it in the above picture), turned VERTICAL, and started SPINNING!!! (Sorry, no picture of the vertical or the spinning...darn batteries!)

So, we had a blast. Toby and Sadie stayed backstage for the entire show (and Sadie fell asleep. Toby was able to see parts of the show that we couldn't. Like after every song, Duncan was handed a new pair of drumsticks. And after the show, Michael Tait saw Sadie sleeping and gave her a kiss. So sweet! What an amazing day!!!

The Beginning of the Trip

Today, we got home from our adventure. We are very grateful to be home, but also sad that this experience is over. Even though we had a very rough start to the trip, I still rand this as the best experience we've ever had.


In the beginning...


...we were supposed to leave Amarillo on Wednesday @ 4:10 & land in Portland @ 10:10. All 4 of us. It was a trip for 2, but we bought extra tickets and extended the trip so this could be our family vacation for the year. Our flight out of Amarillo was delayed 3 hrs because it was stuck in Dallas due to storms. No problem. We had a 4 hr layover in Denver, so we still had plenty of time (and now less of a layover). When we landed in Denver, it started snowing. HUGE, wet flakes. We get on the plane and have to wait for some passengers coming from connecting flights. Then, we had to be de-iced. Cool. We had never been de-iced before, so we were looking forward to the event.

FOUR hours after we were supposed to take-off, we were finally done being de-iced (Denver had put up most of its de-icers for the summer and we had to wait our turn). By this time, we had run through so much gas that we no longer had enough to make it to Portland, so back to the terminal to refuel. Then, they decided to just cancel our flight.


9 flights were cancelled for Southwest at Denver, so the lines were LONG and slow to get rebooked. Luckily, we got rebooked for Thursday, but not until late. Another new experience: spending the night in the airport. With kids. Not much sleep for me.

As soon as I could, I got us signed up to fly standby to Portland so we could get their sooner. The first flight at 6:45 to Vegas (with plenty of connections to Portland). And they had 3 seats for standby. We decided that me and the kids would go because it would probably be hard to get all 4 of us on standby together. So the 3 of us got to Vegas, and then got on the 1st flight out of Vegas to Portland.

Toby actually beat us there by about an hour because he got on a direct flight to Portland. We ended up getting all our bags and the rental car, and then into the hotel by around 2.


More of the story to come...including the BEST parts! And pictures! Oh, and by the way...our Tom-Tom is the only way we survived! Don't know what we would have done without it!